6 comments:

I think someone got some Vincent Baker in your Cory Seward. Check for Poison'd Dogs in a Wicked Age's Vineyards.

This is actually another of Seward's bits of opaque symbolism. He had a whole mythology worked out around the card deck. Remember how the Least Trumps in _Little, Big_ gave oddly specific prophecies targeted exactly to the Drinkwater family? Like that, only with a regular deck. Also, like that, in that if you weren't Cory Seward it didn't make much sense to begin with.

This basically worked as a Reaction Roll mechanism for the Asylum's staff, but it (effectively) needed Seward to interpret the results.

My page is not intact. In fact it was torn out after a most heinous dice war broke out, ( I almost lost an eye, those d4s are sharp ). Someone diving for cover knocked over my Dr. Pepper, and stained the entire page! I retaliated by having the player's character fall into a pit of stinky goo. Sorry I can't help you out.

This system was introduced to give greater emphasis or reason for each PC to be imprisoned in the dungeon.

Card Drawing Player Goal Generator System:

2. 'PC' wants the 'Wand of Supplication' Your player has some reason to want to supplicate someone(s).

3 or 5. 'PC' seeks a new identity. Your player needs a new face, or perhaps just a new name. Regardless, old friends/allies will soon turn against them.

6. 'PC seeks one or more of his/her parents'.Your parent(s) have gone missing, and it has long been rumored that this dungeon holds a 'Mother's Place'.

7 or 10. 'PC' wants to make a 'Cursed' sphere of 'Immediate Success'.This is a dark tool, allowing a Player to reroll any missed dice roll once per fight/day/encounter. Using it holds grave consequences, however. Its pieces can be found in this dungeon.

Jack or Queen. 'PC' wants to win the love of 'a succubus/incubus'.Whether for personal gain or true love, you encountered a devilish being, and need to be reunited with it within the dungeon. No matter what you do, this 'coupling' will end in tears.

King or Ace. 'PC' wants the 'last piece'.Your weapon is magical, but incomplete. You bought it because it was rumoured to be a piece of a key to escape a dungeon and defeat evil.

Ah, that's from Palace of the Pale Prince, the third module in the Into the Depths series. I only have a bootleg xerox copy where the letters are hard to make out, but I think it says:

2 "Caesarion Octopine wants the Undulating Candle Holder." The U.C.H. being a protective magic item that emits poisonous blak ink clouds into the water around whoever is carrying it.

3/5 "Shoggoscipio wants a new identity." Shoggoscipio being, of course, the "friendly" tritoctopus who wants to inject a random PC with its egg so that they can swap bodies.

6 "The Chalice of Milt and Roe must be returned." That was probably not only arguably the most disgusting healing item in any official D&D module, but also the one with the direst possible side effects. I mean, 5% chance that the imbiber dies, no saving throw, as millions of shrimp erupt from his body through his pores? WTF.

7/10 "The Bishop-fish Patrius wants to make a hovering sphere of water." The same sphere that the ichtian invaders are using as "oxygen tanks" in the sequel module "The Abject Shores of Iscariot". Unless you kill the Bishop-fish in this one, of course.

J/Q "The Pale Prince wants to win the love of the Sun Maiden." THAT was obscure and not very well designed. I remember playing this adventure once and running it twice, and the party never drew this particular lot. Without knowing this, the other two - already obscure - hints about the time limit and the palace rising to the surface can't be really figured out. So while we managed to secure the palace to the bottom of the abyss with the Anchor of the Aboleth by sheer dumb luck, the players run out of time they didn't even know was ticking on one other occasion. And on the third it was a TPK anyway.

K/A "The Praetorian Piscine want the Trident of Aquarine." At least in the first printing that I have. Reprints in the 80s were edited because of the "D&D is satanic" scare, and they figured that a fish Jesus figure might not go down well with soccer moms. Therefore, the whole Aquarine angle was edited out in later versions, and the items was renamed Captain Rackham's Trident. Of course, players going through ID2: "The Black Doldrums of Shoggurat" had no way of knowing that the captain's trident is now a plot-near-critical item, so they often just left it behind, because it was a crappy +1 item nobody had proficiency in...